"A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010)

Directed by Samuel Bayer
Written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror and language.

Alright movie fans! My new full-time job has prevented me from reviewing as many films as I would have liked this last week and a half or so, but this one was just too big to keep under my fedora.

The newest installment in the famed series "A Nightmare on Elm Street" restarts the series at it's dark beginnings, expanding on events that were only mentioned briefly or alluded to in the original "Nightmare" movie.

The teenaged children of Springwood are being stalked in their dreams by an eerie man in a striped sweater, fedora and a glove with knives for fingers. The film opens at the Springwood Diner, where Nancy (the hero of the original), Kris (her best friend) and Quentin (Nancy's boyfriend) watch horrified as one of their friends commits suicide with a steak knife while screaming that he's being attacked. I felt like this was a fairly solid opening. The initial dialogue in the diner is a little contrived as it's obvious main purpose is to quickly introduce the main characters. The death scene however, is a great first kill for Freddy. Because witnesses saw the boy kill himself there are no supernatural loose ends that might merit further police investigation. In other words, a death that the parents of the community can mourn as a tragic fluke without worrying enough about their own children to do anything about it. A perfect start to a new "Nightmare".

Well, almost perfect. One of the big problems with this movie is acting. For the first third of the movie, I thought that Nancy (played by no-name actress Rooney Mara) had some kind of speech impediment or learning disability. She speaks like she's having trouble breathing and looks like she's zoned out on some heavy medication. I blame "Twilight". Those terrible "glam-pire" movies have sullied what it means to be a horror movie heroine. Instead of tough, passionate and resourceful, like Heather Langenkamp's original portrayal of Nancy, Mara's version of the character is frail and waif-like, bookish and brooding. It sickens me to draw a comparison between such a good series and such a bad one, but in her worse moments, Mara's Nancy seems like a carbon-copy of the hideous and reprehensible character Bella from the "Twilight" series. 

The devolution of horror heroines (left to right): Heather Langenkamp as Nancy in 1984, Rooney Mara as Nancy in 2010, and Down's Syndrome Bella.

In all fairness to Rooney Mara, even Heather Langenkamp was a terrible actress when she first stepped into Nancy's shoes. The key difference between their performances is that Heather knew how to scream and act frightened. Mara's acting in the remake was of such a low intensity that it almost seemed like Freddy Krueger was an annoying ex-boyfriend who won't stop calling; obnoxious but ultimately harmless. How is the audience supposed to be afraid of the villain when the heroine is so lethargic?

The story of this new "Nightmare" film is actually very good. The writers have taken characters and situations from the original and re-imagined them in a modern setting, with an increased focus on Freddy's back-story (which was only alluded to in the original). In the original "Nightmare", Nancy's alcoholic mother reluctantly reveals that Freddy Krueger was a perverted school janitor who killed (and possibly molested) little children. "...the lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but someone forgot to sign a search warrant in the right place and Krueger was free, just like that." The parents of Springwood corner Krueger in an old abandoned boiler room where he had taken kids to do terrible things to him, and set it on fire with him inside, killing him and ultimately turning him into the vengeful dream demon we  all know and love. In a deleted scene from the original "Nightmare", Nancy's mother goes further to reveal that all of the main kids who are being targeted by Freddy had older siblings who Freddy had killed when he was alive, but when the kids were too young to remember. Watch the deleted scene here:

My idea of the perfect "Nightmare" origins story would be a portrayal of Freddy when he was murdering the first batch of kids as a living man. The film would chronicle all of his alleged kills (around 20) and end with his fiery death at the hands of the town's parents. They could even use this deleted footage from the original (touched up digitally so it looks shiny and new) as a way to tie the new prequel to the original. The new "Nightmare" didn't take this path, but rather tells a story that weaves parts of the original into something new. 

In the new film, Krueger is not killed for killing children, but for allegedly molesting them. He seems more sympathetic in the new film because the parents choose to kill him without even trying to let the law handle him. In the first flashback dream sequence, we see him chased into an abandoned warehouse(?) by the angry parents. As they set the fire, Freddy looks scared and is screaming "I don't know what you think I did". All in all, we're set up to question whether or not Freddy was ever really guilty of the crimes he was killed for.

Whether or not he's a child molester, Freddy is pissed and out for revenge on the kids whose "stories" got him killed. Killing is clearly what Freddy's best at. The kill scenes are pretty solid, and are mostly recreations or homages to the fantastic death scenes in the original "Nightmare". Some of the classic visuals have been redone fairly well. Kris' death scene is a more brutal homage to Tina's death scene in the original. Her terrified boyfriend watches in horror as she's thrown against the ceiling and walls by an invisible force. While it lacks the charm of the "rotating room" special effect in the original, it's a scene that will make fans of the original smile. Certain other effects from the original are worked into the remake in a different context than in the original. Some scenes, like the bathtub scene are almost shot-for-shot.

What Jackie Earle Haley fails to do well is be scary. The makeup artists were supposedly using real burn victims as the inspiration for Freddy's new face. What these talented professionals came up with looks like a cross between Voldemort and Two-Face. Freddy's new, reptilian look is in no way creepier than Freddy's face in the original. I didn't even like the "updated" Freddy face in Wes Craven's "New Nightmare" (perhaps the best of the "originals"), but at least it bore a stronger resemblance to his old face. 

 

Another big mistake with Freddy this time around is that he's over-featured in his own movie. In an effort to provide fans with the maximum amount of fan-service, Freddy all but juggles and does tricks for peanuts. He's practically got more lines in this movie than Nancy, and the lines he does have are mostly bad puns and one-liners. While Robert Englund's Freddy did have his share of one-liners, they only got really cheesy in the sillier "Nightmare" sequels (like when he says "Welcome to prime-time, bitch!" while shoving a woman's head into a television screen). The original was so scary because like "Alien" and other great horror films, the villain was barely seen or heard. The lines he did have were creepy and unsettling, and most importantly didn't sound like he was rehearsing for a stand-up comedy act.

Freddy in "Nightmare 1" is also only seen fleetingly, in part, from a distance, through fog, in the dark or indirectly lit. The overall effect is that we never get a very good look at him and our imaginations are allowed to go crazy. Freddy has more than a few close-ups in the new "Nightmare", and is often well-enough lit that his make-up and attire seem more garish and carnivalesque than creepy. While I have many friends who laud Jackie Earle Haley for his portrayal of "Rorshack" in "Watchmen", I can only say that he made a decidedly sub-par Freddy Krueger. Like George Lazenby, the oft-forgotten actor who played James Bond for a single movie after Sean Connery abandoned the role, Haley has a very hard time filling the shoes of his predecessor. 

I'd give the new "A Nightmare on Elm Street" an 8/10. The "Nightmare" series has been fairly consistent in one thing: the odd-numbered movies are good, the even ones are terrible. This has held through the first eight movies (with "Freddy vs. Jason" as the last bad one), and it holds true for number nine as well. Overall, this is a solid entry in the series. It is true to the feel of the original without being overly derivative. While the lead actors were mostly disappointing, Rooney Mara grew on me a bit towards the end. It's not Shakespeare, but it's an entertaining homage to one of the best horror films of all time.

The first eight films have been recently released in these cheap 4-film packs. Only the odd-numbered ones are good, but even the even-numbered ones are entertaining. If you're a "Nightmare" newbie, stick to the first four. If you like 'em and feel adventurous, check out five through eight.